HD camcorders enter the mainstream once and for all. With image quality like this, there’s little reason to spend more.

Although it takes great footage directly to a hard drive, it's being held back by a few problems.

A high end DVD-based camcorder for quick and clean shooting.

Panasonic has gone above and beyond, releasing its NV-GS35 with its massive 30x optical zoom, dwarfing the usual 20 or so times zooms found on other cameras.

If the CCD is the brain of a digital video camera it is logical that three should be better than one. A single CCD has to deal with all colours together while a 3-CCD system divides the primary red, green and blue (RGB) colours to individual CCDs to give a much more precise and accurate picture. The result is a high quality image that is as good as any of the cameras tested - including the Sony DVD201E, which provided the benchmark for most of the others.

Good things often come in small packages and that's the case with Sony's PC108E. It is only fractionally larger than the JVC GR-DX77 (the smallest camera in the lab) but weighs in 65 grams lighter. Sony has kept it compact by providing a separate docking station that contains the USB, DV and S-Video ports. There also are AV and additional microphone connectors on the camera itself.

Just because something is cheap does not always make it nasty, nor does it necessarily make it the best buy. The possibility of the D701i being cheap and nasty was certainly a concern when the first one arrived and failed to operate, however, it was quickly replaced and the replacement worked fine straight from the box.

The Panasonic NV-GS15 is the cheaper version of the NV-GS120, but you wouldn't pick it to look at them. It is not until you start to use it that you discover why it is $600 cheaper than its big brother with the three CCD's. The single, 800,000 (400,000 effective) pixel CCD produces average picture quality and certainly nothing that would compare with the 1.62 million (1.02 million effective) of the NV-GS120.

There is not a huge difference between this and the MV550E. In fact, if you put them side by side you have to look closely to see the difference in looks, which is model number in small print on one side.

At first glance the JVC GR-D230 looks very much like one of the DVD-R/RW cameras. But it's the stylish design and disc like LCD screen that leads you astray and it is in fact another of the Mini DV tape cameras with the cassette cleverly concealed.

Hitachi pioneered the idea of consumer cameras capable of recording video direct to DVD. The early models were large and relatively expensive but high quality. It has taken a while for the idea to take off but it is certainly gaining momentum with a number of competitors now coming into the market. Hitachi has responded by progressively making its cameras more compact and adding extra features such as a SD memory card for storing still images or compressed video clips.

Canon typically puts out a good digital video camera and for a while had the market fairly well sown up. However, there is now plenty of competition and Canon can no longer just rely on its reputation to keep it at the top. The MVX250i is a mid range camera designed for average users who want something more than the bare basics. Its 860,000 pixel (effective) CCD provides a good quality picture in most cases, including in night mode. However, it can be slow to find a good colour balance.

Whereas a couple of years ago Canon might have described this as a mini camcorder, it now describes it as a compact multimedia DV camera. Certainly by comparison with the others in this month's labs it's not mini, however it does manage to pack a lot of features into a relatively small package. It is an upright camera rather than the longer, squatter shape of the MVX250i and weighs 43 grams less than its bigger but cheaper brother.

Selecting a winner from the 11 cameras in the lab was not an easy task. While there was a $1300 variation between the cheapest and the dearest, the difference in quality and features was not as obvious. For example the Samsung D701i, which was the cheapest of the cameras, had more features than some of the cameras that were several hundred dollars dearer. The only problem was a question of reliability because the first unit to arrive at the Labs was inoperable.

Sony's DVD201E HandyCam is a good example of how far DVD cameras have come and what a bit of commonsense can do when selecting the right format. Unlike some of the earlier DVD cameras which opted for the unpopular DVD-RAM rewritable format, Sony elected to go with the more common DVD-RW format.

It looks like a standard webcam, but the Axis 205 is cleverer than that. Its internal web server and 10/100 Ethernet port mean it can be directly connected to and accessed by anyone on the network.

Samsung has produced a nice looking mini-cam with an unusual dual zoom system. One button for optical and another for the digital, which serves more to confuse than help.

A bargain can be defined as something for which you pay less than you budgeted for, and for which you get more than you expected. Under those criteria the Sony TRV 250E qualifies as a definite bargain.

A good mini-cam that compromises on some features in return for high portability. It has similar specs to the MV630i but a $600 higher price, so the cost for the reduction in size is a noticeable one. It is comparable with the other mini cameras in the lab.

Prices have come down in recent times and there is no better example than the Sony TRV 355E. Compromising on size and portability, but not on video quality or features. Despite its size, it's still lighter than many VHS cameras but has more features and equals most for image quality.